On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 10:20:53PM -0500, Thomas Yan <tyan at twcny.rr.com> wrote: > 1. Have you accidentally sent a private reply instead of posting to > the list? Not on this list. > 1'. Have you accidentally posted to the list instead of sending a > private reply? No. > 2. Have you received an accidental private reply that was meant to go > to the list? Yes. > 3. When you get a message that was sent to you instead of the list, do > you feel obliged to query the sender to ask him or her if it was > meant to private instead of to the list? Sometimes it's obvious from context. > 4. Has the Reply-To behavior of this list caused you confusion when > posting to other mailing lists, perhaps even causing you to > accidentally send a private e-mail instead of posting or vice > versa? No. > 5. How do you feel about the Reply-To behavior of this list? > Do you > + love it > + like it > + don't much care > + dislike it > + hate it > + hate it, Hate It, HATE IT! I'm fine either way. Let me add some additional comments: >From a technical perspective, this list is set up in the technically-correct way. Email clients can interpret this setup in a more flexible manner, and offer more power to their users this way. It's also very convenient not to need to hunt for a user's address when trying to send private mail. However, from a usability standpoint, Reply-To is clearly superior for the purposes of a discussion list. People don't want to have to delete recipients by hand (and many mail clients can't do it automatically). They want a single key to respond to the message, and they want that response to go back out in the same medium that it arrived. Switching from public to private response should require extra work, since that is not the default case. Certainly the exact tradeoff varies by the list. Some lists are more focused on direct responses, but this is a high-traffic discussion forum, and the default should be a public response; the only way to implement that reliably is Reply-To at present. When I make my own lists (I run several), I pick whether to alter reply-to settings on a list-by-list basis. I have lists that work both ways. When I do set up reply-to, I have to hold my nose on the technical side, but it's worth it for the usability. All that said, it's DDB's list, and he is benevolent dictator. I don't have a gripe with however he wants to run it in this regard. (Now, the monthly subscriber list postings are another matter...) -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp